aakh improve response

Hooray. Hooray.

But wait. We started cheering too soon.

Why? Because now, perhaps another 20% of our
remaining mail gets thrown away as soon as it was opened. Darn
it anyway. Here we get 33,000 people to open our mail and
6,000 or 7,000 of those folks said "Oh yuck!" when
they saw that bewildering collection of brochures, order
cards, yes-no stamps and so forth.

But hey, we have
gotten about 26,000 folks to at least read
our letters. And that's not bad, right?

Actually, it's not. What the hell, if every
one of those 26,000 people order, we'll be figuring on getting
a 26% response and gosh, that's not bad at all.

But, of course, all 26,000 of those who do read our mail do not order.
Some of them who read our letters don't order because they
don't believe what they
are reading. But don't worry, we can fix that. At least, on a
percentage basis, we can fix a lot of it!

And now, we are left with those folks who
don't order because they don't want what we're selling and
I'll accept that.

Or because they don't want to pay our price
and I'll accept that.

Or because they are short of cash and I'll
accept that.

But I won't accept, and neither should you,
not getting orders because my letters were not delivered,
opened or read.

So let's stop sniveling and start curing these
problems. Are you ready? Good. Here then, after another
atrociously long preamble, are 20-ways to improve your
response without changing a word of your copy.